Installing Firefox

One of many things I find appealing about Firefox is that it's readily available and easy to install, regardless of your operating system. To install Firefox, first get a copy at http://www.mozilla.org or at http://www.firefox.com.

Note

You can order a Firefox CD from the Mozilla Store at http://www.mozillastore.com if you like, but it's probably easier and faster to download the software and then burn it to a CD yourself if you need to carry it around.

After the software is downloaded, follow the instructions in one of the next sections, depending on your computer.

On a Windows Computer

Double-click the Firefox Setup 1.0.exe installer file. The installation procedure walks you through the installation process. If you want to pick a destination directory and install options such as DOM Inspector instead of using the defaults, you should use the custom installation. On the other hand, if you're willing to trust Firefox's choicesa reasonable idea!just go for the standard installation selection.

Note

In the unlikely event that you're installing Firefox on a Windows 98 computer, be aware that the Firefox icon may appear as a Windows icon. You can change this back to the normal Firefox icon if you like.

Note

If you install Firefox to a location that has spaces in the path, Firefox may have a problem setting itself as the default browser. If this happens, Firefox will prompt you each time you start it to make it the default browser. You can fix this by installing Firefox into a path without spaces.

On a Linux Computer

After you extract the tarball, enter the following commands to start the installation:

 tar -xzvf firefox-1.0.installer.tar.gz cd firefox-installer ./firefox-installer 

If Nautilus is configured on your system to run executable text files, you can skip the previous commands and just double-click firefox-installer to start the installation.

On a Mac OS X Computer

Decompress and mount the Firefox 1.0.dmg.dz Disk Image by double-clicking it. (Depending on how you downloaded the Firefox installation file, this may have been done automatically.) Next, double-click the Firefox Disk Image to open it in the Macintosh Finder, and then drag Firefox to your hard disk. You can drag Firefox to your Application folder if you prefer. Unlike the Windows and Linux versions, the Mac version installs everything in the Firefox installation package. (You probably won't notice a difference, but you should know about it.)

Caution

Don't run Firefox from the disk image, or you'll get locked into a loop in which the Firefox icon keeps appearing and disappearing from the Dock. To stop this, you'll need to open a Terminal, type killall firefox-bin, and press Enter. When the loop has been stopped, install Firefox to a location to which you have write access, and try installing it again.

FAQ: What else can I load Firefox on?

The Minimo (Mini Mozilla) project is aimed at reducing Firefox's size and memory requirements so that you can load Firefox, or a smaller version thereof, on a number of handheld devices. The Minimo version will look pretty much like the version of Firefox you're used to seeing on your desktop or laptop computer, but it'll still do most of the same things.

Early test versions of Minimo are already available for Windows CE and a few other small devices. For the latest information, check out http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo.